408 - Dragon's Lair

Dragon's Lair. Now was the time for heroes. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media Incorporated presents Don Bluth's Dragon's Lair. All rights reserved. Released by CSG ImageSoft Inc. Trademark. licensed by Nintendo of America Incorporated. That is the very first screen you see in this game. That is too much. Mike, you've already failed. Yeah, you've already failed the...

the podcast. We're going to have to start over from the beginning. Why is that? I think that's just how anything related to this game goes, you know? Oh, right, right. Yeah, anytime anyone makes a mistake, you'll have to immediately start over. It's all timed perfect. Well, actually, yeah, we'll get to that because it is a little different. But Dragon's Lair.

A lot of history to this game, mostly because we're not playing the version of Dragon's Lair that is celebrated. Maybe not from a... gameplay standpoint, but from a like medium in video game history standpoint, Dragon's Lair is famous for being basically a cartoon that you watch and do.

quick time events for in order to successfully win. But if you don't do the right thing, you do get a cut scene to show what you did wrong too. So it's like, there's a lot of- interesting like things that can go wrong and things that can go right and seeing that through and basically a game of memorization in the arcade version but for whatever reason

The NES game had to be something completely different. They couldn't translate that into some kind of pixelated movie, so they had to turn it into this platform action game. instead that kind of retells the events of the movie. All that to say, to get back to that very long title screen that has all the rights reserved and companies and who worked on what.

Those should just be, if they're trying to go for like that movie effect, you know, movies always start now with like seven different companies that worked on the movie and you're not sure if the movie started yet or if it's just another company.

These should have all been individual things. It should have been like Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media presents Don Bluth's Dragon's Lair. And then... you know like keep hitting me with companies but instead it's just all at once like a sandwich it's kind of crazy yeah maybe it was like a patience thing yeah can you imagine like i i feel like i i feel like you just want

You just want to make this a worse experience. I guess, although, Mike, your suggestion would get people primed for how patient they need to be during this game. Yeah, we didn't even tell you how long each card should be up for, right? Like Sullivan Blue's Indirected Media should be up for at least 15 seconds before we get to presents. And every time you try and skip it by pressing start or a button, it just starts over. Yeah. Right, right. That's the restart button. Yeah.

So the game was on, it's a Laserdisc game. Did you guys ever own any kind of Laserdisc? No. No. My, wait, what is it? Is it my 10th grade? My 10th grade chemistry teacher had a LaserDisc player to show very outdated chemistry videos. He would type in the frame number.

Instead of using like a chapter select. This is your 10th grade? Oh yeah, they were already outdated by that. I was going to say, this is like 2007? Something like that. And he just really liked his Laserdisc player. I couldn't tell if he was trying to be funny or if... Or if he just had something wrong with him. But that was a part of my childhood, yeah.

It's kind of funny because in a way you're learning about what he's teaching you, but then you're also learning about Laserdiscs at the same time. You're getting two lessons at once. In a way. And my only understanding of Laserdiscs was that they... They were a preferred medium for film enthusiasts, and that's actually where Criterion first started releasing stuff was on Laserdisc. Huh. So there's a history of...

Some of those being very sought after, rare prints of Laserdisc stuff. It's not like it can hold a candle to the stuff we have today, but... I don't know enough to say that it was better or worse. I'd say it's a good step up from VHS. From VHS? Okay, that was going to be my question. At least it's digital, and you don't have tracking and stuff like that.

And so this Laserdisc game gets turned into this brutally unforgiving, side-scrolling, you know what, I'll keep it a cinematic platformer because it is kind of... scripted in certain ways that you can't quite tell and that we'll get into. But you play as Dirk the Daring. Is that a good name for a hero?

Well, I don't know if it's meant to be a good name. He looks derpy, I'm assuming, on purpose. He crawls around kind of like a little dork. He walks kind of dorky. He's kind of supposed to be a little dorky, right? The only other Dirk that I know is Dirk Diggler, so... I'd say that he's in good company. It's not even the Dirk that makes it. It's the daring makes me feel like, oh, okay, we're making fun of this guy. It's kind of like lame that he has the daring.

And he has to go through Mordrok's castle. Just another nonsense character name. Dodging all of these basically... Instant death traps. And I don't say that just in the fact that they're one hit KOs. I mean, like everything in the game is designed to kill you the first time. And then you're just expected to remember how to avoid it going forward.

uh but Dirk also has a very stiff jump uh and I feel like that's where I want to start because we're saying that the the cartoon FMV game was turned into a platformer platformers are all about the jump and this is like this is sin number one of the 1000 sins of this game is that the jump is maybe the worst in recent memory

So I feel like a lot of this game, it's like doing a lot of things that the arcade game did in spirit, but like not in actuality. And if you're going to use like a... If you're going to take something that was supposed to be really visually impressive because it was actually a cartoon and it's not like actually like game engine stuff and you're trying to do that.

in a game engine that you're controlling like a video game i i would do kind of what they're doing like make it that pitfall-esque like what i assume is like rotoscoped uh, animation. So it's, it's trying to give you like, Oh, this looks good, right? This looks good. Like, like dragon layer. Yeah. That's kind of something I wanted to bring up too. I'm not saying it was a good.

I'm not saying it makes for good gameplay, but I do think that if you're translating that FMV style thing into like a side-scrolling NES game, like they did a great job of not just like... not just translating like oh this looks good for an nes game just like it looks good on the arcade but also like it cut it feels frustrating in similar ways because of the like weird flowy stiff motion and like the

is there's something about that that makes it feel both like a video and like incredibly frustrating and i i got to imagine that was deliberate like i feel like they wanted the jump to be stiff so you really have to know exactly where you're gonna need the land before you pull off your jump and you can't just like Mario it and get really good at the platforming and then like dodge things around like every moment feels like a

oh my God, can I get through this? Again, not saying that they pulled it off in a way that is like, wow, this is great gameplay, but I think that that was their intent. Or at least that's what I gather. I think it's just the way he jumps that is the most bothering. I get the whole... rotoscoping and making it look like it's a full motion video, but he jumps as if he's lost complete control of every other.

thing in his body and like he might as well just go into t-pose when he jumps he's completely useless in jump too like he can't do anything else so it's just very like there's a better way for a human to jump then Dirk decided. Yeah, and I'm not defending it as like, no, no, I think it's good. I just, my gut tells me that this is what they wanted, you know?

they wanted it to feel like okay once you've committed to jumping like you're stuck and like because that just adds another layer of like everything feels like a trap

The NES game wasn't made by the same people who made the Laserdisc game. It's the... It's the Bluth Company. No, well, it was in collaboration with them, but they made the main game too. So it was developed by Motive Time, who I don't have any information on. to pull from to make this like an interesting thing other than the fact that like very clearly you know you're taking a game and turning it into a totally different kind of game

And yes, it has like the blessing of the makers or whatever, like in spirit, like, hey, this will make us money. You know, like, I guess that's the kind of blessing that they're getting. But it's just, I can't think of too many other examples. of games like that that completely change the nature of the game while also being made by different people like i could understand if the laser disc thing like wasn't possible on the nes but you would still want to like

see through and create your version of Dragon's Lair. Sure, and I think that's what they did. I don't know. I can't say for certain whether they went into this thinking like... We're going to just make it another hard trial by error, trial by error game, trial and error game that that's just like lots of. smooth animation and that's just how it's going to loop into the original. But I don't think they really failed. I think there's a lot of games that we've played.

from arcade that have completely changed up what you see on the NES. Haven't, like, isn't that the case? Oh, sure, yeah, like, graphically, sure, but not, like, genre shifts. Okay. yeah yeah this is like a really interesting experiment to me where it's like yeah it's like when i started playing this i at first i was like wow okay this isn't what i remember from just like

not from ever playing it from just like hearing about it what dragon's lair was it took me a little while to be like i don't think this is what i know as dragon's lair but i had to look it up and see that it's this other thing and i was like okay so they really just it's kind of more reminiscent to me of like that weird

era where every game was released on like PS2, Xbox, and Game Boy Color. Yeah. Where it was like the Game Boy Color game was clearly a totally different game. Yeah, definitely the whole like handheld.

redesign vibe is here. Dirk is traveling through this evil wizard's castle because the wizard has imprisoned Princess Daphne. And if anybody here got to the end of the FMV version of the game, they didn't have to go that hard on Daphne. As hard as they did. But, wow. She is guarded by...

Yeah, she's guarded by the dragon. She's guarded by the dragon singe. I think I'm saying that right. But that's just like plot. And the actual objective is you got to kind of have to like enter the castle, which might be. someone's entire experience with this game. And then once you're inside the castle, you use this elevator to go through these four main levels, each filled with endless amounts of bottomless pits, monsters, traps.

And then each level kind of ends in a boss-like sequence until you finally reach the bottom of the lair with where the dragon is. What you actually do is, you know, you start the game. You see a drawbridge descend, you approach it, and then you die, either by a dragon killing you or falling through the parts of the bridge that I guess weren't sturdy enough, even though it was...

holding up just fine before it had any human weight on it. And presumably, people have walked over it before if it's a drawbridge. So I guess it's just a trap. But that's what's really happening in this game is that the very first screen... Maybe the final boss for a lot of people. Yeah, also the door. You can die by touching the door as well. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, so I definitely took probably...

10 minutes just to play the first green. And if I didn't have a podcast to record for, I would have stopped well before that. But yeah, so you got to kind of... First, you have to trigger an event where this dragon pops his head out and creates holes that you have to jump over, and he starts, like, shooting. fire at you and you can jump over him but with the drawbridge no sorry with the bridge down they have like they've also put down the gate because there's a dragon out there

Now you have to find a way to destroy the dragon. So unfortunately your attacks don't hit him If you've already jumped over him, so you have to get back to the other side Or just don't jump at all and then get into a very specific spot and sort of just play footsie with him by crouching and then you've uh you'll probably get a couple licks in and then you finally after probably 10 to 15 minutes You finally beat this This first screen and you can walk through the open gate

Yeah, well, I'll say that you have me beat by a significant amount of how long it took you to beat this, because I was playing, I'm not even kidding, the first day that I was trying to play this, I...

I told my girlfriend after she was asking me, like, oh, you're playing for the podcast? And I said, like, yeah, I can't get past, like, the first few steps of the game. And she's like, you mean, like, the first few levels? I'm like, no, literally the first, like, the first, like, five steps that I take.

I can't get past, like, that. And, like, it took me a while. And then finally, like, the next day when I figured out exactly what I needed to do, I was like, okay, well, I can get a lot further. But, I mean, it's not... it's not clear and like obviously it's a little bit of a puzzle i guess because there's like only one real like position you can be in to to hit the dragon you got to make sure the dragon

has appeared on screen but then stays up and if you crouch it goes back into the water and all this stuff but like if you go to the other side of the dragon like i'll get past the dragon and the door is closed and then i'll like turn around and try to throw the knives at him but he throws them over his head

And it doesn't let me duck anymore from that side of the dragon. Like just because there's not something they're blocking me from ducking or anything. It's just, that's not what they want me to do. So I have to go back.

and duck somewhere else so I can hit the dragon. That feels cheap to me. The whole game, it's sort of this first screen is a microcosm of it. But the whole game kind of has this feeling of the things you're supposed to do being cheeses in themselves. The fact that when you get into that position to throw your knives...

Not all of them hit. It's not even like it looks like because there's some bullet drop basically with your knives that actually lead them into the dragon's head before he ducks down. And because it's so inconsistent looking and so awkward looking, it looks like you're doing something wrong. But that is the only way to get past that part. It reminds me of...

In Gradius, there's the volcano and there's like the spot where it's the double volcano and you can just like park yourself somewhere. And even though the volcano is spewing all these projectiles. You'll never get hit. And then you just drop missiles on it until it dies. It's like once you know that, you do that every time and it becomes trivial. But it's not something that you would just.

necessarily find out in like your specific gameplay. And so when I was playing without looking at a video, this drawbridge. Yeah, it was an embarrassingly long time with just like a hilarious amount of ways to die. Like the fact that it's not just the dragon's fire breath that can kill you, but... touching the dragon, falling through the drawbridge, touching the door, as Sean mentioned, just wrong collisions. All those things make it such a frustrating thing that...

When I finally did beat it, I watched the YouTube video on like what you're supposed to do. And yeah, that whole idea of just like camping out on the left side of the screen and then like. having his head appear up and throwing the correct amount of daggers at him and then waiting rinse and repeat you wind up like realizing okay sure that's not fun but i'll do that in order to get past this screen

And then most of the game winds up becoming that, like always just kind of parking yourself in a place away from the enemies and kind of cheap shotting them. I just want to go back to like, and I'm glad that you, that you sort of circled back to it. that what you said the like just memorizing something before until it becomes like rote and then it's just trivial execution

Isn't that what Dragon's Lair for arcade was? Yes, but at least you were being treated to a visual spectacle. Peel away the Disney animation stuff, and that's the... That's the skeleton behind the game. Yeah, I think that, and I haven't played the arcade version, the original version, but I think that what sets this aside is that I can see... I can see the world where it's something that I enjoy, where I appreciate the gameplay, because every moment is kind of like a little puzzle.

figure out what you have to do where you you know like other than that beginning part again i only got through that part in the next level and then like i got barely through the third section before i started just watching a video of it but like

Other than that first part, everything else that I played, it always felt like, okay, I can figure out what I have to do. I think there's just a lot of things that need to be different. The thing that I have to do... should a lot less often be what you guys were saying like just stand there and spam the enemy you know like that way I can see a world where like you can make a game like this where every moment is satisfying because you're figuring it out like it's frustrating and then satisfying

One, because you're figuring out these different things, and two, because it's more forgiving as to where it starts you when you die. As this game, you die, you go back to the beginning of the level, you gotta do all this extra stuff again, you're actually memorizing the whole level, and that ruins that...

potential for me to like enjoy this but i don't know if the arcade game had that potential if the arcade game was more just like you just get to watch a cool video and you just hope you press the right button i would so you didn't watch you didn't watch like a playthrough I watched a little bit of footage of it, but I didn't really gather what makes people decide what they're doing. Yeah, the full game executed to completion is an 11-minute video.

And it's actually, like, the feedback that the game gives you visually and auditorily gives you a really good idea of what you're actually doing on this arcade machine. It's... I think you just have like four directional buttons and an attack button and you just have to it like You have to play the game over and over get to points where you need to hit

one of those buttons at a very specific time and get the timing right. And then you'll get some like visual feedback that you did it right. And then you will continue or you will get an alternate video. of your character dying and so there's no way it's not gameplay there's like there's no actual gameplay it's all what we will soon call quick time events in in video games um

And so this is way more of a video game than the original. What you were saying about if there were things that felt good to pull off. Like in the first like in the arcade game that's impossible because you're only interacting with a video really in this game It's really hard because all you're doing are slowly standing up and getting on getting into like a shimmy position

Or throwing a knife. Or jumping in a really weird way. So I don't even know that, like, even with your base verb buttons, there is, like, a thing that you can do to make it feel good. Yeah, I mean, I...

And I, you know, I'd just love to put devil's advocate here, but like, I did have times where I was like, okay, now I see, okay, I got to stand over here, wait for this thing. Like, where I figured out the timing of it, where I was satisfied. It was just... it was just too much of it was just the same thing and it was cheap over and over again like but like I did I can think of games that are like I

I feel like there were some like old like flash games and stuff like that, that were just like so frustrating. But the whole, the whole idea was like, everything is going to kill you. And you, but you, you slowly start to like get a rhythm for it as you go. And like. I feel like this has the, the soul of that. And it was just a matter of, can they pull it off? I remember impossible game, which I think was like, I think it was called impossible game, but it was like one of the, it was.

Yeah, it was like one of the earlier Xbox arcade games. And it was just a square hopping along the line. And it was a nightmare to play. But I spent hours playing that stupid game. But I think that's like more in line with original Dragon's Lair than this. Yeah.

Sean, everything you've said about Dragon's Lair, the arcade cabinet is correct for reference, because I know you were saying, I think it's like this. It is. It's four directional buttons and the sword. I think it's also worth mentioning, though, that... Unlike a lot of modern QTE games or games that have QTEs in them, it's a very unforgiving amount of time as well. You basically have to be at the ready. It's not something where you have like...

oh, it flashed, and you have a couple seconds to decide what direction. It's like, it flashed, and you better hit that button or be in that direction in that moment, or else it's going to immediately play the scene where you die. And yes, that's that's how they made all the money. Right. So in that respect, this game being just as cruel makes sense. And I'm not I'm actually not.

opposed to them changing the whole thing and trying to like make some kind of pixelated FMV thing on the NES. Like I get that. I just, uh, am not sure that like, The audience was here for this, you know, like Dragon's Lair was a hit for one reason and trying to like, it's almost like, you know, how do I put this?

You know, you have Bloodborne on PS3 and the PSP version is like a JRPG where you like have a team of people in turn-based combat. It's like, that's not Bloodborne, you know, like you wouldn't want that. I do get what you mean. I think that there's if if there was this JRPG version version of Bloodborne that somehow leaned into the not even just like the vibes.

like the uh aesthetic of it but like the philosophy of the game like oh you have to be more you have you have to be more uh aggressive in order to conserve health or something along that like along those lines i think that would i would buy that more but i agree with you that as the audience for bloodborne the actual game i probably wouldn't be the audience for this

hypothetical jrpg version of bloodborne even if it was doing something like philosophically in the same vein yeah and i'm looking at this game as like this is the first version of this game i ever played but yeah you're right if i like bought this and I was like oh my god I get to have this at home now and then I get home and it's like oh this isn't even even similar to the same thing that I thought it was like yeah I'd be pissed

And I think the game just kind of wears you down over time, too, in a way that the original game, while being, like, frustrating, would have continued to eat your quarters because you would be like, oh, now I know.

that what to do in that scene you know so now i can do everything again the same way and plus this new scene and you're basically just paying the full price of a movie to eventually hopefully make some progress in the arcade game here Okay, so like Ghost and Goblins, a very tough NES game, but one that we famously said in our episode was not cheap.

which I think a lot of people disagree with, but I still think it wasn't like, if it was a cheap death, it was something that you still felt like you could improve on. In this game, it's all cheap deaths all the time, not necessarily things I feel like I can improve based on the controls I'm given.

And so this game becomes something that the more you die and you will continue to die because you just can't anticipate new. Like, for instance, in the very first level after once you enter the castle. Snakes just appear randomly. There's no explanation. Are they bursting out of the walls like the Kool-Aid man? They are, because this is actually one of the adaptations from the game where there's snakes that come out of the wall.

It's also, I think this is the worst type of game to have that enemies endlessly respawn thing. Because it's just like, okay, I figured this part out already. I did this part. And it's just like, you have to really... be focusing on what you're doing next and also what you just did because it's probably coming back. I think the only enemies that endlessly respawn are the ones that are just like, we haven't really gone into this yet.

So in most cases, if you get hit by something, you will die immediately. But there are enemies in the game that are just more like nuisances. Like there's bats in the beginning. But they wear you down. Yeah, they wear you down there. And I think that's just a way to like keep players moving so that like, cause if you do all of the actual, uh, like platforming and timing stuff correctly.

you'll just not get hit by the things that kill you, but they want those people to still have to move faster, I guess. That's my guess. And... I think those ones will just continue to respawn infinitely. But anything else, I think that... Like the snakes. I think you only kill a certain amount of snakes and then you can move on.

Yeah, I think you might be right. Those enemies that fly towards you and they take down a little bit of your health. Yeah, because a snake will just kill you. Right. And it's not the worst thing in the world. You get hit by an enemy that's just going to take down a little bit of your health. But like...

it does i don't think i never found like a health pickup are there health no i think you just like it's just like another way that you're like slowly it's like death by a thousand cuts in like a it's like well i've avoided all these things but then like i wasn't paying attention all these little things and they Nickel and dimed me to death. I ended up dying anyways.

Actually, I think there is health pickups. Each one is a letter, like just a square with a letter. And I think the E, which is also health, right? Oh, energy. Yeah, the energy, yeah. There's also axes, daggers, fireballs, all these things, A, D, F, L for life, C for candle, and G for gold. Major pitfall of this podcast that I feel like we've never discussed before is that by playing all these games so so frequently to to to record them on a weekly basis.

We obviously play them in advance, but you have to basically relearn. or learn a new game every time so you would think by now we're really good at the NES but I view myself as like a master of none like I have never had enough time to be great at any of these games other than ones that I'm like naturally good at the genre. And then like, you know, that usually becomes a problem with any game of like, when you're first starting it for the podcast, I'm mainly just like,

jotting down notes and trying to learn the game, but it takes up a large amount of time. And that becomes like frustrating, but eventually you learn how to at least get by and explore more of the game. In this one, I... I was more just so frustrated about how often I was dying without feeling like I was really like learning anything or finding new things to talk about. And so I know that this is like unique to our podcast situation.

But again, I think it's worth stressing how punishing this game is. Yeah, and that's why I appreciate when we can just talk about other things. Just pretend that this is a podcast about...

about life. And then we don't even record it. Yeah, it's a podcast about Sprite. Love Sprite. Sprite is so good. Spot. Red spot? Oh, cool spot. Seven up. Oh, that's seven up. Come on, poser. Everybody knows Sprite's mascot is just a lemon. That's true. Not even a lime. Right. Is it just a lemon on the bottle? Isn't it like a half lemon, half lime? I think it is. Yeah, it's like a green-yellow. I thought it was like a frog.

Sprite has a frog on the bottle? I've never seen that. No, I'm just trying to induce some kind of Mandela effect in you. Oh, okay. Cool, cool. You made me nervous. Let me look up the Sprite frog. Frog Sprite from Chrono Trigger. The Sprite actually, the way they do the lemon into the... lime with the like uh the fake little uh like it's almost like a sun it's pretty pretty cool we don't talk about that enough it's like sun and moon with the yellow and green

See, we already, we got off track. Don't you feel better? Like after playing Dragon Slayer and now I'm talking about Sprite. Okay, but hold on. I typed in Sprite Frog and it came with a Sprites of Frogs. So then I was like, I should type in Sprite Soda Frog. But I didn't feel like moving the cursor. So I just said Sprite Frog Soda. And the AI overview is giving me Sprite Frog Soda refers to a creative drink recipe.

That uses sprites and are garnished with gummy frogs and have a frog-like appearance. Have a frog-like appearance. That's AI for you. But the drinks are often, but no, I'm like scrolling down. There's like recipe, there's like websites with recipes of like this frog. Oh, it's real. Yeah. It didn't hallucinate that. Frog pond, lily pad fizzy bomb drink, dirty soda.

Two thoughts here about Sprite. First is the new Sprite like rebrand. Terrible. I don't like that. Just the idea of like just text being enough for. like for a design. You need, you need some kind of imagery. No, like, well, Coca-Cola, the way that they, there's enough history. There's enough history there. And I know, but it's different. It's different.

This is like Sprite used to have like a cool banner around it and the lemon and the lime. Now it literally just is the word Sprite on a green piece of paper and then lemon lime in yellow, which is like not even they couldn't even do like lemon. yellow and lime and like like green they they just stopped trying but most importantly about the sprite rebrand they got rid of the green bottle in flavor of a clear bottle and i don't like the idea that sprite is clear yeah

My space has always been green. You can think whatever the current school of all graphic design is where texture is bad and everything has to be flat and minimal. I think that's because it's just easier to make a phone icon if everything is flat and minimal. No, I'm serious. Probably. Like an app icon or something. Does Sprite have an app? Also with Sprite, is it short for something? Sprite feels like a naturally refreshing word.

It's like, I think Sprite was originally some kind of fairy, right? Or like a ghost? Fairy ghost? That's cool. I don't know. There is a Coca-Cola app. I recently learned that there's a Burger King app, so I think there's an app. The Burger King app is very useful. Yeah? You can get rewards. You can basically get free things every time you go to Burger King. Wow. You rule.

You know what's funny? The guy in the commercial, right? He's like, happy, have it your way. And then what does he say? You rule. Right, exactly. But it kind of sounds like he's saying, you're rude. No, it doesn't. Yeah, he's like, you're rude. That's a Mandela effect only for you. No, it's not even a Mandela effect because I know he's saying you rule. That's their whole thing, right? You're the Burger King. But it sounds like he's saying you're rude. Believe me when I say that.

You'll never hear it the normal way now. You'll always hear you're rude. Oh, no. I want to talk about one thing for the very beginning of this episode. The video game or the... Okay. The podcast. Did you say the back of the box said... Now? Read the back of the box for me again. Yeah, it was like now was the time or...

Then is the time or something where the tenses didn't line up. Yeah. Now was the time for heroes. What is that saying? That's like pretty, it's pretty interesting though, right? Is it like you just died and it's like, wow, now was the time. But you missed it. But don't you think like it's the kind of thing that sounds so dumb when you hear it and then you're like, oh, well, maybe they are saying something profound. Yeah, it's I think I'm going to be up all night.

I'm sure there's some very complex past participle future verbiage where that actually does make grammatical sense. It says, here, I'll jump in halfway to the back of the box. Dirk the Daring walked steadily toward the castle gate. He felt no fear. Fear was for cowards, not the most courageous knight in the land. Uh-oh, Joe sounds like the whole lame thing. Oh, no.

We're going for it. No other would dare enter this perilous castle where Mordrak had imprisoned the helpless princess, but then no other could match Dirk's unrelenting love for the beautiful princess Daphne. There was no other possible course of action. Now was the time for heroes. Now was the time to enter the Dragon's Lair. See, it kind of works. It makes sense in that whole context. But just alone, it was confusing.

Well, that's why I pulled it. It's a good cut, and thank you for bringing it up. It's the most interesting part of the text, right? Well, now that we're here, Mike, you wanted to say some words about Daphne? No, I think I already said enough, but she is also on the box for the NES game drawn completely differently. And I just don't know, like, is that, are we sure she's royalty?

She's wearing a crown, but otherwise you might think she got lost at the Playboy Mansion, right? There also are a bunch of lizards with crowns in this game, so I don't think that crowns really mean much. This is like a self-appointed thing. I declare myself princess, I declare bankruptcy. Exactly, exactly. And we've talked about...

We've actually talked about a lot in this game, even though Sean tried to divert the intentions of this podcast. I think he succeeded. Yeah, I think he actually did a great job, and people are going to demand a sprite game. So here's a question for you. If you're changing the game enough...

to basically become this platforming action game. Did it need the instant death design? Did it still need that like punishing feel that the original arcade game had? Or could it have been something where... And I know not everything in the game is instant death, but basically everything in the game is.

Could it have just been like an actual energy meter that mattered? And like, you kind of like, okay, like I could take this chip damage for a little bit, but I can't just like walk through every enemy in the game. Would that have even mattered though, is another question. The answer to that really depends on how they do everything else. And I think if they do that and this is actually like a game that feels good to play and it's...

just about the, maybe there's more story and it's really just the characters. Then it's really like, I guess it's still Dragon's Lair, but at least this still feels again, like the ideas of Dragon's Lair. kind of remixed in a vacuum. Maybe they should have done that because it's just probably be a better game. But that's a good question. I don't know if they had a... Design doc they had to stick to and the game starts you with six lives

So it knows it's hard, right? Like you don't usually get six lives unless you do like some kind of cheat code thing. I'm having deja vu right now because I feel like you said this in a very recent episode, like almost verbatim. We had seven lives. We had seven lives. Deja vu? No, it was Atlantis Nonazo for the Bytes episode. Great plug, Joe.

But you're having deja vu because, yes, we also recorded an episode called deja vu pretty recently, which everybody should listen to at least twice. At least. Now.

um you start the game with six lives as i mentioned so they're aware of it being hard but then you have there's no continues there's no passwords there's no save uh there are some there's the ability to find extra lives but it's not like through points it's it's via these the l icon that you just collect in the game which all that stuff is so uninspired in these kinds of games right if this is supposed to be a cinematic game why can't i just actually pick up axes or actually pick up

Is it that hard to make a sprite of gold? Like a gold coin? Yes, right? Like the most iconic collectible of any video game ever, a gold coin. They just put a letter G in a square. instead well i mean he should like the gold coin with his thumb and then catch it or something like give if he has the animation ability even without all the animation stuff it's like just a yellow circle

seems like it's less complicated than a G in a square. It's funny that you mention that because, and this is another tangent, but at least it's video game related. In Super Mario 64... uh the game obviously famous for being a 3d platformer that kind of redefined 3d platformers the game everybody's like oh my god look at all these polygons look at all this 3d stuff it's mario in 3d

The coins in that game are 2D sprites, just that they're like faked with some like the ability to look like they're 3D because they're in a 3D world. So it's just funny that you mentioned like how hard could it be? to do gold coins but like they couldn't figure it out on the n64 but that's they still did it they they figured it out it looks 3d on the n64 right right he could have just been collecting the letter g that would have been a lot worse

So if you lose all those lives, which is the point I was getting at, you start all the way back at the drawbridge. That's really unfair. Yeah, it's punishing. And so I think that's really everything I have to say about the NES game, but I have a bit of a...

as long as we want to go tangent about dragon. Let's go tangent, Mike. Let's tangent it up. Okay. So obviously the original arcade game was first, but this is not the first port. of dragon's lair uh to consoles or computers the first port of it was in 1984 that's right the arcade game is actually all the way back in 1983 which is what makes it so damn impressive

But in 84, it came to the Coleco Atom. Anyone ever heard of that? Absolutely not. Right. I think it's just like, it was like a computer add-on. Or at least maybe just a full computer. Oh, dear God. Yeah, it's a nightmare thing. But we'll also look at the Dragon's Lair port of Coleco Adam. That's what I'm looking at. Right. It's the first home conversion, though, of Dragon's Lair. And it's not an FMV port, but it uses like traditional graphics and has its own gameplay.

But it's not this game either. It's kind of weird that everybody was in on the idea of we can't make Dragon's Lair. Yeah, it's closer, sure. And there's more stages, and it's based around the scenes in... The stages are based on the scenes in the movie. I keep changing what it is. It's a movie, cartoon, laser disc. It's a cartoon. The entertainment experience.

Honestly, I'm sure this plays horribly, but it looks pretty cool. Right, right. I am sure this plays horribly. Yeah, I'm sure it's terrible. The next version I want to mention is the Super Nintendo. version of dragon's lair because you would think oh it's you know we got eight extra bits on there like did did anything get better uh did what did they do but it is another side-scrolling platformer um

where it's very similar in concept to the NES game. Still got a big sprite of Dirk, slow movement, stiff jumps. But, like, I struggle to see other than graphics. what was improved like like they had a chance to like fix the because this game wasn't received it looks smoother at the very way smoother yeah it looks smoother but it's not I guess what I'm saying is it's like it's not

It's not a noticeable improvement in gameplay over this game that like, wasn't people probably hated this game and understood how cheap it was. And like, it wasn't reviewed kindly.

So why like throw it again? The gold is a circle with a G in it and it's gold cards. How about that? Yeah, what I gather from watching this is that it like... and i don't know i'm not i'm not controlling it so i can't tell but it looks like it may be over corrected for the stiffness and i i'm guessing that like one you know

press of left on the d-pad makes you run like 12 steps or something that's kind of what it looks like and then he like skids to a halt so it might be like oh we made it smoother but we still had to make it just as frustrating so we made it so it's like you you can't stop once you start This looks a lot more like a typical side-scroller with normal enemies and maybe you even get a couple hits before you die. The guy I'm watching is very good at the game, but...

Less of an experiment in pain and suffering than the NES version. The next iteration is on the Game Boy. Dragon's Lair The Legend came out in 1991. And it is just like there are no enemies to fight. The entire game is just precision platforming across moving platforms with. different kinds of deaths and a timer through each thing. But your goal in this game is around collecting 194 fragments of the Lifestone.

It's like, when did that... Where's Daphne? Daphne is in the game. She's still at the end of the game. But like... I don't remember. 194 fragments? What does the Lifestone do? Is Daphne dead? Is this Shadow of the Colossus? You need to bring Daphne back to life? I don't know what happened to Daphne. I just know she's at the end of the game. This had to be something else that they just decided to make. Yeah. Why not? Right. Now, here's the interesting one. Game Boy Color.

10 years later, in 2001, it did do the FMV thing. It was... It's not a 1-1, so it is basically a recreation, but you watch small, very compressed scenes and input the directions. as you watch the game. It's kind of funny. This is crazy. It looks great for Game Boy Color. I would think this is almost Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Color can't be anywhere worse than... the NES was in terms of power. Oh, yeah. I agree. So they could have done it. The tech was always there. They just didn't know it.

This actually, this Game Boy Color thing, though, started off as a tech demo for Tarzan. Wow. That's interesting. So they were like, I guess they were showing that they could take Tarzan and put it. Just like, don't do the Tarzan thing. Just remake what's already there. And...

the next version oh sorry so not like the net the next sequential version but there are it is worth mentioning that there are two other uh official dragon lair uh entries in this trilogy of games so there's dragon lair dragons layer 2 Time Warp, where I guess they go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and do the Time Warp again. And then Dragon's Lair 3, The Curse of Mordred. Now, I didn't really like because, again, these are just like you're watching them.

So it's still quick time event based. But I think it's I think it's like there's some forgivingness added, at least in like the amount of time you have to respond. And also, if you die. you restart from like the current point you were at like the check the most recent checkpoint rather than going back to the beginning so that's nice but the third one i wanted to call out specifically because it didn't get an arcade port

It got, it got ported directly to home. It got released on home computers. And so it kind of looks like all those Disney movies, like Little Mermaid 3.

And like Bambi 2, the kind of shit you never knew existed unless you were like, you know, had a VHS player and just needed new... versions of these movies to watch because you watch Snow White a thousand times and you're like wonder what happens to Snow White after that well we got Snow White 2 3 I think they're up to like Cinderella 5 I was a big Aladdin 3 fan okay but Aladdin 3 the

Prince of Thieves, King of Thieves, and Aladdin 2, The Return of Jafar are both really good. I didn't know either of those existed. I love them. But you know what, though? Actually... I think the best Disney sequel, like straight to video sequel, is Lion King 2. It's like as good as the original Lion King. Lion King 2 is good, but it's nowhere near Lion King 1 1⁄2. Well, yeah, I mean, that's probably the best movie. Well, what about Lion King 268 over 2? Yeah. That's coming. Don't you worry.

But if you didn't get a chance to check it out, do check it out. Dragon's Lair 3 just has a huge visual downgrade from the first two in a way that's got to be disappointing as like a conclusion to a trilogy. Looks kind of CDI. Is this CDI? I think it was released on CDI. Let's see. It was released on Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS. No, it was not released on CDI. Dragon's Lair 3D Return to the Lair came out in 2002. It is a 3D action adventure game on Xbox, GameCube, and PS2.

But I do like this one, visually at least, because they went with like that cel-shaded graphics thing, which was like... really good during that generation specifically. There are a lot of really good looking cel-shaded games for GameCube and Xbox. I can't think of anything for PS2 off the top of my head, but I'm sure since they all got ports, they all have the same games.

Now for the weird poll, the one that I was like, come on, like do some more digging. There's got to be one weird Dragon's Lair entry, and unfortunately it has nothing to do with Princess Daphne. It's Frankie, Joe, and Dirk. On the Tiles, a Game Boy game released in 1993. That is the full title, Frankie, Joe, and Dirk On the Tiles. It is a Game Boy puzzle game using that tiles game where you, you know, like...

There's one empty space and you have to like drag everything across to make a picture. Yeah, the slide puzzle. And it's featuring three characters from three different elite series. Dr. Franken. Joe and Mac and Dragon's Lair. Now, all three of those games are platformers. So there is some kind of like, you know, cohesion between them. But like the Dr. Franken is basically Frankenstein. Joe and Mac, they just gave us Joe? What happened to Mac? This is the first Smash Brothers, man.

Right. Everybody's here in 1993. Not even Mac. Honestly, I think Sakurai doesn't have enough courage to put Frankie, Joe and Dirk as a singular character that you can choose. And all of their moves are tile based.

Would love it. I'd play it. Now it's our turn to face one last perilous leap with the Essential Games List. Well, we got to here, which is further than I thought we would for a game so punishing. I don't know what to say. I'm glad I was able to talk about this game for this long and Sprite as well. Shout out to Sprite. Please sponsor us. This game, I hate it. I really do. I'm glad that they tried something. I'm glad I had something to talk about on this podcast. But this is...

Absolutely going in the worst games I've played of all time. It's not even up for discussion for me. Any kind of merits it has.

are uh they diminish immediately if there's if there was ever a moment of joy in this game i didn't feel it but maybe you guys can convince me otherwise sean yeah uh in the same boat here uh i think the complete that thought like any merit that this game has is only viewed in comparison to the arcade game like it's like a sort of like oh i can see what they're kind of going for here or i kind of get that there

as like an homage or whatever like oh there's a cameo of that character here uh on its own this game is crap and i will never play it again and i I would recommend that you don't either. Not essential. Joe? Yeah, it's already a level removed from the game that was so popular.

the original game, and the reason that original game was so popular is because of the time it came out in. It was impressive, like, at the time. And, you know, you can still look at it and be like, that animation is impressive, fine. But even going back to that now... where we have games, we have 3D games, we have games that are big adventures and everything. Going back to this quick time event game that's really punishing, I feel like it's really only appreciated in a historical sense.

and this is a lesser version spin-off of that that's like just trying to to to bask in a little bit of that so like especially now today We're so far removed from finding the enjoyment in this game that, yeah, definitely not essential. I have never played... The actual Dragon's Lair arcade cabinet, though, and even though I imagine that being just as bad a time as this, especially if I have to actually put quarters in and not just some kind of free play cabinet.

I kind of just want to see because, you know, watching it on YouTube, like, yeah, the animation looks good and everything. But I kind of get the feeling that on like on those arcade cab CRTs. It might look even better, like in the sense of like what it was going for and everything. And so I kind of just want to like visually look at it because sometimes arcade cabinets are just cool to like take in. And I feel like we you can't weigh that.

on these games when you're playing them in an emulator. And I'm not saying 1942 becomes really cool when you're playing it in an arcade cabinet. That kind of game doesn't transform. But some of them... Certainly do. I mean, you guys know, like when we go to the retro gaming conventions, it's like...

All the arcade cabinets together all making that sound, like everybody playing them, the lighting and all that shit. The bleeping, the blooping, yeah. Yeah, the bleeping and the blooping. Of course, if things bleep, they also bloop. It's true. Yeah, I would definitely play this on an arcade if it were at like barcade or something for maybe five quarters or whatever the equivalent.

of a quarter is nowadays, which I think is like $18. But that also brings me to, and I haven't watched this, so I cannot grant that it is a good watch. I do see on YouTube right now, how much did it cost to be Dragon's Lair in 1983? And I'm really probably going to watch that when we're done recording here. It's not really a...

a QTE game in the same way that Dragon's Lair is. But for some reason, I was thinking about Azora's Wrath while we were recording this episode. And that has other... things to do in it it's like it's also a beat-em-up and it becomes a rail shooter and it has it has all sorts of crazy things it's pretty crazy game um but i always thought it was like locked to uh the ps3 and the 360.

And I just see now that it's on, like, PC right now for $2.99. Hopefully that's true. I'm going to click buy after the episode. But, like, this game is insane. And it has QuickTime moments that are... actually like they actually feel cool and it's like you're playing uh an episode of like dragon ball z and maybe that's the difference is like what you're doing in quick time events matters too and to have to do like everything

in in this cartoon to like make things happen and all you're really doing is just like hitting the sword button to sit to swing the sword and seeing it happen like isn't as exciting as like The Doom has really big muscles. Yeah, exactly. But in Azor's Wrath, it's like you've got to hold down RT and LT really, really hard. And then you've got to press the A button at just the right time and swivel around the joists.

It's like I'm surprised that there were no like Street Fighter like motions in this in this Dragon's Lair game where like you have to like half circle or quarter circle. I'm surprised there were no. There were no Street Fighter-like portions in Dragon's Live or NES. I meant in the arcade version, but your point stands. That's even more of a ridiculous sentence.

I'm surprised that there wasn't a dance pad for Dragon's Lair in the arcade. You gotta hit the whammy bar to get star power. Also, not for nothing, because I don't want this episode to end, apparently. When... When you're playing the arcade game, it's kind of frustrating that the input is displayed on screen.

Rather largely, especially with the sword in the center of the action. It's like, I'm watching this. Yeah, that is silly. But at least, you know, for our purposes, it helps to... illustrate how it works we don't have the game in front of us so that's true that's true but i just got a new tv which i think is awesome except for the fact that if i mute

uh the tv like i want to mute the game i'm playing so i don't hear the audio over and over and over again the mute icon stays on the tv i hate that's a huge That's a huge no-no. Why do all TVs do that now? Right. I got to figure out how to turn that off. There's got to be a way. Blame your parents.